On Love: Empathy
by Droewyn
Summary: Victor asks for Yuko's help in learning to understand Yuri better.


"It's not just a matter of nerves, is it?" Victor asked Yuko quietly as they watched Yuri practice from their usual position behind the boards. The object of their attention was trying to master a particularly tricky step sequence and seemed to have forgotten their presence for the moment. He wasn't stealing furtive glances at Victor every few seconds anymore, at any rate, and was flowing over the ice with relaxed grace as a result.

Yuko glanced at him. "No. Not in the way that you're used to thinking of." Thankfully, the pretty young proprietress of Hasetsu Ice Castle had lost most of her awe of him over the past few weeks, though Victor wondered if she'd ever be truly comfortable in his presence. Yuri Katsuki hadn't spent his formative years idolizing Victor alone, after all. "I take it that he can't talk to you about it?"

"However did you guess?" By now he was more than familiar with Shy Yuri, Stammering Yuri, Frantically-Trying-To-Deflect-the-Subject Yuri, not to mention Blushing-with-Mortification Yuri (and wasn't _that_ a charming sight to behold), but sometimes Victor would ask or say... _something_ in an attempt to figure out what was going on behind those melted-chocolate eyes that would just cause the younger man's face to drain of color and his jaw to visibly clamp shut. Yuri would quiver and look miserable and terrified, as though desperate to speak but physically prevented from doing so by some kind of external force. When that happened, well. Victor had quickly learned that in those moments it was best to cheerfully develop an urge for a relaxing soak in the hot spring so as to let Yuri escape to his room with some modicum of dignity.

She sighed. "You should really be hearing this from his family, but you're..." Yuko made a flustered gesture in Victor's direction.

"I'm his _coach_ ," Victor stressed, wishing not for the first time since his arrival in Japan that he could erase that damned skating-legend persona from existence. "And from what I can see, you and yours _are_ part of his family."

"Yes, I suppose we are." Yuko pitched her voice even lower, although from Yuri's inward-focused expression he wouldn't have noticed if Yurio kicked the doors in while accompanied by a lecturing Yakov and a brass band. "Yuri... has anxiety. Chronic anxiety, I mean, and depression. He takes medication to help manage it, but. You've seen. He worries, which makes him feel badly about himself, and then he does something self-indulgent to try and feel better-"

"-Like eating too much katsudon-" Victor interjected thoughtfully, the pieces starting to fit into place for him.

Yuko nodded. "Yes, exactly. But then he starts beating himself up over _that_ 'weakness', which makes him feel even worse and leads to more self-destructive behavior until he feels totally worthless. It's a spiral, and it paralyzes him. We all do our best to be there for him, but sometimes I don't think that he believes anyone else cares about him, not really." She sighed again, wrapping her arms unhappily around herself as she watched over her childhood friend.

The two of them lapsed into moody silence, Yuko clearly lost in her own thoughts while Victor struggled to wrap his head around this way of thinking. Self-worth was an easy, dependable constant in his world. You work to learn a new skill, practicing until it is mastered. With mastery comes success, and with success comes confidence. Doesn't it? Crowds don't cheer for worthless people. Worthless people don't make the podium. For Yuri's mind to tell itself such lies, and for Yuri to believe those lies against all verifiable evidence? It was utterly incomprehensible. _If only I could figure out the proper angle to enter the jump, but I don't understand this ice at all. How do I know where to dig my toe in, when-_

"Victor! Is everything okay?" Yuri looked nervous as he glided to a graceful halt in front of the two bystanders. "It was terrible, wasn't it? Okay, I'll-"

"No no," Victor said quickly, smoothing his frown into something pleasant. "Your footwork was beautiful. But your free leg was getting a little sloppy at the end there, so I was concerned that you were tiring. Also, I'm thinking that your gestures could be a bit more sensual. You don't want to leave _all_ of your eros in the short program, hey?" Victor swept out an arm to demonstrate, flashing one of his most devastating smile-and-wink combinations.

Yuri flushed, but his shoulders relaxed marginally. Having a mask for any occasion was certainly a benefit of living one's life in the spotlight, Victor mused darkly as he continued beaming at his student. "You did good work today, _kobuta-chan_. Go hit the showers."

The grin slid from his face once he and Yuko were alone in the rink. "Do you-" he started. "Can I trust you?" she demanded at the same time, grabbing Victor's wrist and pulling him urgently to face her. She looked like she was losing an argument with herself, or perhaps steeling her nerves for something. "I mean," she fumbled, "Do you care for Yuri?"

He blinked. "How do you mean, exactly?" he asked carefully.

Yuko gave him an exasperated look. "What do you mean, _how_ , I'm asking _do you care about him?_ About _Yuri_ , not for future gold medals or some kind of conquest or whatever the hell you actually came here for-"

"Yes," Victor said instantly. He clasped Yuko's hands in his own and let her look into his ungua- well, _mostly_ unguarded face. "I came to Hasetsu because I saw his video performance and it moved me. And maybe I was expecting..." he huffed a short, self-mocking chuckle at a ghost of a memory. "I don't even know what I was expecting anymore. But the Yuri that I found is kind and warm and full of life, and he deserves everything that the world can possibly offer him. He said that I helped him remember his love for skating. _I_ want to ensure that he never loses it again."

Whatever Yuko was looking for in his eyes, she seemed to have found it. "Fine," she said shortly. "Wait here."

When she returned from the office, she glanced around briefly to ensure that Yuri was still safely in the locker room before pressing three small objects into Victor's hand. There was a flash drive with a Disney princess charm attached to it, a USB micro-adapter, and a key. He raised an eyebrow at the last.

"In case you want to come back by yourself later," Yuko said. "This is... Yuri thought he was alone, okay? He has absolutely no clue that anyone saw this, let alone recorded it, and thank all the gods that I got it away from the girls before they managed to do anything horrible with it. _They_ think I erased it. Just, please-"

"I'll guard it as if it were my own heart," Victor found himself promising as he slipped the items into a pocket.

"Guard it as if it were _his_ ," Yuko snapped, then turned to greet a damp and contented-looking Yuri, all blandly cheerful smiles that proved once and for all that Russian superstars don't have a monopoly on deception.

Burning with curiosity, Victor pleaded a headache and locked himself into his room immediately after dinner. He used the adapter to plug the thumb drive into his phone, slid a pair of earbuds into his ears, and queued up the contents in the phone's video app. It was a single mp4 file that still bore the random string of characters the recorder had given it as a name. Victor hovered his thumb over the play button for a long moment before finally taking a deep breath and touching it.

Yuri stood poised in the center of the ice, reminding Victor forcefully of his _Stay Close to Me_ performance. But this was a somewhat younger, more fit Yuri; this footage had clearly been taken a few years ago. Music began to play through the rink's sound system, another difference between the two recordings, and Victor recognized it almost immediately as belonging to the same movie as the little plastic princess that dangled from the flash drive. The film had been a worldwide sensation, and this song topped record charts for months on end. It had always made Victor feel powerful, singing joyfully of casting off limitations like the brushing away of cobwebs. Here I am, world; see me shine!

That... was not Yuri's interpretation of the theme.

Yuri Katsuki danced _despair_. He pushed invisible friends away with careless gestures and cold, precise spins, shuddering as their warmth faded but telling himself bright lies with a smiling face. He leapt, yes, a frenzy of double axels and triple Salchows (he had no quads yet, a small technical part of Victor noted), but no matter how high he reached he was always forced cruelly back down to the ice, every perfect landing a failure because it wasn't _enough_. What good was it to make miracles, that slight, dark body demanded to know, when there was no one left to share them with? Was bare existence even living? Yuri launched himself into a frantic step sequence. _This_ is _enough_ , his feet shouted, trying desperately to convince. _This_ is _enough_! Here _I am alone!_ Here _I am_ safe, _here I can't be hurt or hurt others; because without hope, without trust, without_ love _, if any of this can ever be worth anything all, it has! to be! enough!_

The song culminated with the soprano's high note, which Yuri marked with a flawless, blazingly difficult three-jump combination that would have had any audience in the world on its feet had one actually been present to witness it, then he skidded to an abrupt stop. His arms were stretched wide like the cartoon princess, his face alight in what, had Victor seen it five minutes ago and out of context, he would have taken for joy and triumph but now could only read as a twisted sneer of self loathing.

Yuri held the pose for several long, shuddering seconds before - deflating - and skating heavily out of frame. True to the words of the song, he hadn't shed a single tear; his face was now an expressionless mask, but his cheeks were dry.

That was all right. Victor Nikiforov was sobbing quite hard enough for the both of them.

Ten minutes later, he was on his bicycle with his skates slung over his shoulder.


End file.
